Insightful Quotes

Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. Others have called this deepest quality confidence, and I have referred to trust as the earliest positive psychosocial attitude, but if life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.

You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only one who does what you do.

The evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness, and 'consciousness' cannot evolve unconsciously. The evolution of man is the evolution of his will, and 'will' cannot evolve involuntarily.

Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.

Treat a child as though he already is the person he's capable of becoming.

From the glow of enthusiasm I let the melody escape. I pursue it. Breathless I catch up with it. It flies again, it disappears, it plunges into a chaos of diverse emotions. I catch it again, I seize it, I embrace it with delight... I multiply it by modulations, and at last I triumph in the first theme. There is the whole symphony.

Those who live by mystery & charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy - the most sublime and benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone on man - endeavored to crush your well-earned & well-deserved fame.

My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.

It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power.

It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.

The good news is that the bad news can be turned into good news when you change your attitude.

In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.

Losers live in the past. Winners learn from the past and enjoy working in the present toward the future.

Everybody talks about wanting to change things and help and fix, but ultimately all you can do is fix yourself. And that's a lot. Because if you can fix yourself, it has a ripple effect.

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I ever doubted it for a minute.

What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness.

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

One doesn't stop seeing. One doesn't stop framing. It doesn't turn off and turn on. It's on all the time.

If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera.

Every one has a gift for something, even if it is the gift of being a good friend.

You must lose everything in order to gain anything.

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.

Whoever educates himself and improves his own morals & character is superior to the man who tries to teach & train others.

A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.